Gamblers will need to take a selfie to prove age for fruit machines

Gamblers will need to take a selfie to prove they are old enough to play fruit machines in new betting crackdown

• Selfies with age-estimation technology will see if customers are over 18
• The machines will be able to stop them playing if they are deemed too young 
• More than a quarter of schoolchildren have admitted betting on fruit machines
• Yoti, the firm behind the software, says estimates are 99.65 per cent accurate  

Fruit-machine players will now need to take a selfie to prove they are over 18 in a crackdown on underage gambling.

Facial age-estimation technology is being installed on thousands of betting machines in bars, pubs and service stations across the country.

A camera in the machine will take a photo of a customer’s face before they are allowed to play. 

Within two seconds, an algorithm will determine their age to within 18 months – and stop them from playing if it decides they look too young.

Fruit-machine players will now need to take a selfie to prove they are over 18 in a crackdown on underage gambling

More than a quarter of schoolchildren have admitted betting on fruit machines, according to research carried out by the Gambling Commission.

Two-thirds were not stopped from doing so by staff, who by law are supposed to check if a player looks under 21.

The move to introduce the age-estimation technology is a victory for the Daily Mail, which is calling for reform of the betting industry and tougher regulation.

The British tech firm behind the age-verification software, Yoti, says its algorithm can analyse a photo to detect when a player is under the age of 23 with 99.65 per cent accuracy. 

It also says it can accurately estimate the age of someone between 13 and 19 to within 18 months of their true age.

Yoti is keen to stress the technology is ‘privacy-friendly’ because it does not cross-check people against a database of faces and deletes the image instantly once it has been checked.

More than a quarter of schoolchildren have admitted betting on fruit machines, according to research carried out by the Gambling Commission (file image)

Customers can also verify their age on a free Yoti app and then use it every time they want to play on a machine by scanning a QR code with their smartphone.

The new technology is being installed by Regal Gaming Technologies, which operates around 15,000 machines across the UK and supplies them to chains including Wetherspoons and Greene King. 

UK supermarkets have also been trialling Yoti’s age- estimation technology at self-checkouts.

Instagram recently announced it would introduce the software ‘by the end of the year’ to verify whether underage users in the UK were trying to change their age on their app to appear as an adult.

Robin Tombs, chief executive of Yoti, said: ‘We are committed to using our tech for good, in particular how we can help protect against anyone underage accessing age-restricted leisure activities or online content.’

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